Thirty years went by in the blink of an eye.
In the Soul Society, where souls lived for centuries without growing a single gray hair, thirty years was considered a quiet afternoon.
For Kazuma, it had been thirty years of pure, uninterrupted bliss.
He had perfected the art of the bureaucratic slip.
Whenever a dangerous hollow hunt came up, he developed a sudden, tragic case of seasonal joint stiffness.
Whenever a noble clan demanded an honor guard, he volunteered to guard the empty storehouse on the other side of the district.
He was the Tenth Division’s oldest unseated officer—a living legend of harmless mediocrity.
Except for what happened at three in the morning in the subterranean caves beneath the Sokyoku Hill.
Down in the pitch-black cavern, three hundred feet beneath the Seireitei’s bedrock where no spiritual wards reached, the air was not cold.
It was dead.
Kazuma stood in the center of the cavern, his black Shihakushō untied at the shoulders, bare chest glistening with light sweat.
Floating six feet above the ground in front of him was his Zanpakutō, *Jakumetsu*.
The blade was no longer steel.
It had turned into a mirror-black glass needle, completely devoid of reflection.
Kazuma closed his eyes and let out a long, steady breath.
“Bankai.”
He didn’t scream it.
He didn’t roar at the heavens or flex his spirit pressure to crack the bedrock.
He simply spoke the word into the dark.
“Jakumetsu Muon-Kō.” *(Extinction of the Silent Abyss)*
The cavern didn’t shake.
Instead, every single law of thermodynamics within a hundred yards violently ceased to exist.
The sound of dripping water cut off instantly.
The ambient heat dropped past absolute zero, freezing the very light particles hanging in the air into glittering, motionless dust.
A massive sphere of utter void expanded from Kazuma’s chest, swallowing all momentum, all vibration, and all kinetic potential within its radius.
A falling pebble from the ceiling hit the outer boundary of the sphere.
It didn’t shatter.
It didn’t bounce.
Its molecular bonds simply lost all kinetic vibration, collapsing into a pile of subatomic powder that dissolved into nothingness before it could touch the ground.
Within this domain, Kazuma didn’t just stop attacks.
He dictated the kinetic reality of everything inside.
He raised one finger.
A hundred yards of solid bedrock above him turned to cold dust, leaving an empty, polished dome without producing a single decibel of noise.
Kazuma lowered his hand and dismissed the release.
The black void folded back into the small glass needle, dropping neatly into his open palm and reverting to a plain steel katana.
The air warmed up.
The water began to drip again.
Kazuma slid the blade into his wooden scabbard, wiping his brow with a rag.
“Took twenty-five years,” Kazuma muttered to himself, checking his internal spirit pool.
“Clean domain.
Zero sound leakage.
Nobody on the surface felt a ripple.”
He had achieved what only a handful of Shinigami in history ever managed—and he had done it solely so that if a monster like Yamamoto ever went crazy, Kazuma could slip out the back door without getting turned into ash.
He threw his uniform coat back over his shoulders, climbed through the hidden rock shaft, and made it back to the Tenth Division barracks just in time for breakfast.
His peaceful morning lasted exactly four minutes.
Kazuma was sitting on the wooden veranda behind the mess hall, happily chewing on a hot sweet potato, when a shadow fell over his porch.
Standing in the courtyard was the Tenth Division’s Vice-Captain, a massive man with a scarred jaw and a perpetually furious scowl.
“Kazuma!” the Vice-Captain bellowed, stomping across the gravel.
Kazuma immediately put on a weak, pathetic cough, holding his ribs with one hand.
“Ah, Vice-Captain…
my chronic lumbago is acting up again.
The doctor said if I carry heavy boxes today, my spine might permanently collapse.”
“Shut up about your back!” the Vice-Captain barked, shoving a red-stamped parchment directly into Kazuma’s face.
“The Fifth Seat died during yesterday’s Menos Grande suppression in the outer Rukongai.
The Sixth and Seventh Seats are in the Fourth Division trauma ward.”
Kazuma blinked, taking a bite of his potato.
“Terrible tragedy.
Truly.
The division should hold a moment of silence while I take a nap in their honor.”
“Central 46 issued an emergency battlefield promotion mandate,” the Vice-Captain growled, glaring at him with pure disgust.
“Every officer below Fifth Seat must move up to fill the roster gaps.
Since you’re the only unseated member with more than twenty years of service who hasn’t managed to get himself killed, you are now the Tenth Division’s Seventh Seat.”
Kazuma’s jaw dropped.
The half-chewed sweet potato almost fell out of his mouth.
“Seventh Seat?” Kazuma’s voice went up an octave in genuine horror.
“Vice-Captain, please reconsider.
I have no ambition!
I can barely swing a sword without getting dizzy!
Look at my arms, they have zero muscle definition!”
“It’s already signed by Captain-Commander Yamamoto, you lazy bastard,” the Vice-Captain sneered, crossing his arms with grim satisfaction.
“You get a private room, a twenty percent salary bump, and you have to lead the western perimeter patrol starting tomorrow.”
“A private room?” Kazuma paused.
“Yes.”
“With a lock on the door?”
“Yes.”
“And nobody can come in without knocking?”
The Vice-Captain frowned, bewildered by the sudden shift in questions.
“It’s an officer’s quarter.
Of course nobody comes in without knocking.”
Kazuma swallowed his potato, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and stood up straight.
“Well,” Kazuma said, his expression instantly smoothing into calm, solemn dignity.
“If the Gotei 13 truly requires my humble service in these trying times, who am I to refuse the Captain-Commander’s wisdom?”
The Vice-Captain stared at him for three seconds, completely baffled by how fast the man’s chronic back pain had cured itself.
“Report to the quartermaster for your officer badge,” the Vice-Captain grunted, shaking his head as he walked away.
“And try not to trip over your own feet on patrol.”
“I’ll do my absolute worst, sir,” Kazuma replied cheerfully.
He took the red-stamped paper, folded it neatly into his pocket, and strolled toward the officer dorms with light steps.
A private room meant no roommates.
No roommates meant he could practice high-tier Kidō inside his own four walls without sneaking into the woods at midnight.
‘Seventh Seat,’ Kazuma thought, looking up at the clear blue sky.
‘A bit more work than I wanted, but manageable.
As long as I keep failing upward slowly, nobody will ever suspect a thing.’
Little did he know, in the grand halls of the First Division, an ancient, one-eyed old man was already looking over a list of empty Captain seats with a very tired frown.